The gospel for Saturday of the 16th week in ordinary time is taken from Matthew 13:24. 30. Jesus proposed a parable to the the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from? He answered, an enemy has done this. His slaves said to him, do you want us to go and pull them up? He replied, no, if you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest. Then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, first collect the weeds.
Tie them in bundles for burning, but gather the wheat into my barn. The shadow of religion is often that it oversimplifies things and decides that the real work of Christianity and religion is to get rid of all evil so there’s no impurities anywhere. That’s not the work that we have before us. As believers, we have the work of growing, learning, exploring things. Evil is allowed by God because it’s a great teacher, and without it we couldn’t reach the fullness of the harvest that he longs for us to have. So let this teach us that patience with our imperfections is part of the process essential so that we don’t make a mistake of ripping out of ourselves parts of ourselves that are valuable and needed.
Please take the next few moments to reflect upon what we have opened our hearts to, and I’ll end with a prayer. Closing Prayer Father, if we embrace our own humanity, we are engaging in inner work that enables us to accept one another’s humanity. To expect perfection of ourselves will always lead us to judgment and condemnation of those who don’t follow what we think they should do. Free us from that. Let us grow naturally as you intended us to, dealing with all that is good and all that is evil. And we ask this in in Jesus name, amen.
